Waste Management

Belgium / Regulator Says It Supports Principle Of Deep Geological Repository

By David Dalton
16 June 2020

Fanc has backed proposals put forward earlier this year
Regulator Says It Supports Principle Of Deep Geological Repository
The plan, which is also the subject of a public inquiry, calls for a deep geological storage system on Belgian territory. Image courtesy Ondraf/Niras.
Belgium’s nuclear regulator said it is in favour of the proposed principle of deep geological storage for high-level and long-lived radioactive waste, but the safety of disposal plans is still to be demonstrated.

The Federal Agency for Nuclear Control said in a statement that current proposals deal only with the principle of geological disposal. “At this stage, it is not yet a question of discussing how, where and when the storage facility would be built,” the statement said.

In April the Belgian National Agency for Radioactive Waste and enriched Fissile Material (Ondraf/Niras) submitted a draft long-term management plan for high-level and long-lived conditioned radioactive waste to Fanc.

The plan, which is also the subject of a public inquiry, calls for a deep geological storage system on Belgian territory.

Fanc has now said it supports the idea of a repository, but in a review of the plans has also made a number of other substantive comments on the Ondraf/Niras proposal. It said the possibility of multinational storage should not be excluded and long-term management on one or more sites “shoud be considered.

In a statement in April Ondraf/Niras said waste would be stored in an underground repository in a stable geological layer that would contain and isolate it in the long-term.

“All countries with a policy for this type of waste have also opted for geological disposal,” Ondraf/Niras said. “They rejected all alternatives, including extending the storage. They do not meet the criteria of safety, protection, feasibility and ethics. There is no reasonable alternative to geological storage.”

A large part of Belgian high-level and long-lived waste has been or is produced by companies associated with the production of electricity of nuclear origin, Ondraf/Niras said.

“In Belgium, no decision has yet been taken on the final destination of [this] waste. The draft plan constitutes a policy proposal which enables a first decision to be made on a technical solution [for disposal].”

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